Double defeat. He General Court of the European Union has dismissed this Wednesday the appeal presented by the former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont and his former advisers Toni Comín and Clara Ponsatí against the decisions of the European Parliament to suspend their immunity. In a second decision, Luxembourg it also dismisses, as inadmissible, the appeal of the former president and Comín against the refusal of the president of the European Parliament to protect his parliamentary immunity in 2019.
“Both demands are dismissed, we will study the arguments of the General Court and this forces us to appeal in cassation as we have done on all previous occasions,” said the lawyer Gonzalo Boye, responsible for the process on behalf of the Catalan politicians.
The general court, before which the Court of Justice can now be appealed, had to rule on two issues today. On the one hand, two appeals filed by Puigdemont and Toni Comín in which they asked Luxembourg to annul the decision of the president of the European Parliament, of December 10, 2019, not to notify the plenary session and therefore not to refer the complaint to the competent committee. amparo lawsuit that both filed asking for their immunity. A petition that the pro-independence deputy also filed in her name Diana Riba and Giner in October 2019.
In the second case, the most important, Puigdemont, Comín and Clara Ponsatí, who became an MEP not after the 2019 European elections, but after the Brexit, appealed the decisions of the European Parliament, of March 9, 2021, by which the immunity of the three was suspended, after a long process by which the Spanish Justice sent a request to the European Parliament to revoke the immunity. And here the door closes, bringing the possible delivery to Spain a little closer. The process is not over yet, however. The Belgian authorities, to which Spain issues the Euro-orders, were waiting for Luxembourg to make a statement. But with appeals still available, it is possible that everything will continue for a little longer at an impasse.
In today’s decision, the General Court rejects “all the reasons put forward by the three Members, in particular their allegations that Parliament erred in concluding that the aforementioned judicial process was not initiated with the intention of harming the activity of the deputies”. The European Parliament, which processes many requests from the Member States during each legislature to deprive its deputies of immunity, never entered into the substance of the legal issue between the Spanish authorities and the pro-independence leaders. It simply verified, after a detailed process in the Committee on Legal Affairs and then in a vote in plenary, that the reasons for which they were and are claimed have nothing to do with their activity in Brussels or Luxembourg, but rather due to previous events in our country. And therefore, and as always, he granted the request without prejudging the final result.